Ruling party MP proposes Russia’s own international tribunal for war criminals

Russia needs to establish its own international court for war crimes as the existing body in The Hague depends on the nations that sponsor the war crimes in Ukraine, a Russian lawmaker said.

“What hope can we feel toward the people and nations that at
the same time are patrons and puppeteers of The Hague tribunal
and the regime of military criminals,” MP Vyacheslav Nikonov
of ruling party United Russia told fellow lawmakers at Tuesday’s
session of the State Duma.

“For this reason I think that we must found our own tribunal
that would deal with war crimes,” he added.

“We will not forget and we will not forgive,” Nikonov
said.

The MP stated that the conflict in the neighboring country had
already claimed thousands of lives and many of the victims were
children, women and elderly people. He added that the Kiev
authorities have so far failed to investigate both the shooting
on Maidan that claimed the lives of the “Heavenly Hundred” and
the attacks on Odessa’s Trade Unions House that killed dozens of
anti-Maidan protesters.

In May 2014, soon after the tragedy in Odessa, MP Leonid Slutskiy
of the nationalist party LDPR said that the CIS – the Russia-led
economic and political bloc uniting many of the former Soviet
republics – could set up a criminal court of its own in order to
judge on everything that took place in Ukraine.

“Representatives of the so called Kiev authorities who have
ordered a punitive operation in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, and who
turn a blind eye at the massacre in Odessa, must be tried and
convicted as war criminal,” Slutskiy told the press.

Also in May 2014, Russia’s Public Chamber initiated a petition
aimed at bringing the current Kiev authorities to account for
creating the conditions that led to the events in Odessa, and
other human rights violations in Ukraine. The petition has
gathered thousands of signatures from supporters in Russia,
Ukraine and all over the world.

In November 2014, Russia proposed that the Parliamentary Assembly
of the Council of Europe launch an international inquiry to
investigate crimes against humanity in Europe, such as the
tragedy in Odessa and the mass executions of civilians near
Ukraine’s Donetsk. State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin reiterated
the suggestion at the meeting with members of PACE’s Presidential
Committee in Moscow.

In mid-January Russia’s ombudsman for children’s rights, Igor
Trunov, said that the International Criminal Court in The Hague
had accepted the lawsuit against Ukrainian officials. Russian NGO
Moscow Red Cross accused pro-Kiev forces of killing and
enslavement of civilians, indiscriminate shelling of residential
districts and using hunger as a lever against residents of the
southeastern regions of Ukraine.

Russia’s top law enforcement agency, the Investigative Committee,
has launched several criminal cases against pro-Kiev politicians
on charges of using banned methods of warfare and committing
genocide of ethnic Russians. The suspects in the case include
Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and the governor of the
Dnepropetrovsk Region, Igor Kolomoyskiy.